SUFFOLK SOLID-WASTE BILL COULD LEAD THE NATION

In the fast-food industry, they are innocently called ''clam shells.'' But a majority of the Suffolk County Legislature considers them to be a nuisance or worse, and wants to ban them.

The clam shells - styrofoam containers that restaurants use to serve hamburgers, chicken and other fast-food fare - would be among the plastic products made illegal for packaging food in Suffolk County under a bill written by Steven Engelbright, a Democrat from East Setauket, and introduced with the support of 11 of his colleagues.

Mr. Engelbright said his bill - which needs 10 votes to win approval - is designed to both decrease the total amount of plastic in garbage and help create a recycling market by requiring restaurants to separate plastics from biodegradable waste.

''Clearly recycling is a goal that this bill is very much intended to move toward,'' Mr. Engelbright said. Would Lead the Nation

Representatives of the plastics and fast-food industries, gathering their forces to oppose the bill, are calling it unneccessary and discriminatory.

Clearly, however, both industries have taken notice of the Suffolk proposal - and similar ones in Berkeley, Calif., and Michigan.

''It is the Berkeleys, the Suffolk Counties, where this stuff takes off,'' said Jerry Powell, the editor of Resource Recycling, a magazine covering the recycling industry. ''In that context, I can assure you that people are watching what Suffolk County is doing.'' Real Need for Recycling

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If approved by the Suffolk County Legislature, the plastics bill would not be the body's first ground-breaking environmental law. The Legislature has been in the forefront of nonsmoking legislation, bottle-return laws and bans on the use of certain detergents to preserve ground-water quality.

''At this time,'' Mr. Engelbright said, ''after the floating billboard of the barge, it is not even a close call that we have an immediate, imminent need to move toward recycling.''

Statewide, a bill that would have placed a maximum 3-cent tax on non-food and fast-food packaging languished in the Assembly Ways and Means committee after being approved by the Environmental Conservation Committee, said Gordon M. Boyd, the executive director of the Legislative Commission on Solid Waste Management.

The bill, which would have given a 1-cent credit for recyclable packages and another 1-cent credit if the package contained recyclable material, was designed ''to make the packaging industry a demand center for recycling,'' Mr. Boyd said. Biodegradable Packaging In Suffolk County, rather than placing a tax on packaging, the proposed legislation would prohibit any retail establishment in Suffolk County from selling anything that wasn't wrapped or packed in biodegradable packaging.

Packaging, state officials say, accounts for about a third of the 18 million tons of garbage generated each year in New York. It would be defined in the bill as: all wrappings, adhesives, cords, bindings, strings, bags, boxes, containers and disposable plates, cups, eating utensils or drinking utensils.

Bottles would be excluded from the legislation, as would packages for raw meat or vegetables and medicines or medical supplies, Mr. Engelbright said.

McDonald's, which has 7,500 restaurants in the United States, is ''concerned and watching,'' said Stephanie Skurdy, a spokeswoman for McDonald's. ''Our position is that we just don't believe it serves a purpose to single out any particular type of packaging because there is a tradeoff with all kinds of packaging.''

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A version of this article appears in print on August 19, 1987, on Page B00003 of the National edition with the headline: SUFFOLK SOLID-WASTE BILL COULD LEAD THE NATION. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe